Creating a web site in your DartFS account

Web server  rcweb.dartmouth.edu (aka caligari) delivers content stored in DartFS.

Web directories for personal accounts and lab shares are not created by default, to avoid problems with content accidentally being placed in there and made accessible to the world. Ask Research Computing to enable web access for your account. Aliases can be created for NetIDs, subject to approval and if there are no conflicts with existing aliases.

All DartFS accounts and lab shares can be configured, on request, with a public_html folder with appropriate permissions to allow the web server on rcweb to read it. Content placed in public_html is open to the world unless restricted by .htaccess files at the directory level. For personal accounts, your URL will be https://rcweb.dartmouth.edu/~NETID or https://rcweb.dartmouth.edu/homes/NETID For lab shares, the URL will be https://rcweb.dartmouth.edu/LABNAME

We can also create, on request, a DartmouthWebShare folder in personal or lab space. All content in DartmouthWebShare directories is subject to Dartmouth NetID Single Signon (CAS + DUO), with access via https://rcweb.dartmouth.edu/shares/NETID-or-LABNAME. Access can be further restricted by directives in .htacccess files, but otherwise is readable by all Dartmouth NetIDs.

Features:   

• All accounts created in DartFS can be enabled for web access
• Content can be managed directly from any computer which can see DartFS  (SMB mount from campus or VPN, NFS mount on Research Computing linux servers)
• Content need not be located directly inside public_html or DartmouthWebShare, but can be linked via symbolic links, subject to the following restrictions:
  • The OWNER of the symlink must match the OWNER of the target file or directory.  This is required by the Apache web server and is to prevent exposing other people’s files via the web.  In lab shares the owner of the files may not be available to create the symlink.
  • The web server must have read access to the target files, which may require adding read access for group rc-webserver to the access control list
  • The web server must be able to reach the target files via the direct path (no symlinks).  This may require adding traverse access for group rc-webserver to one or more higher level directories.
• rcweb currently serves static HTML (.html) pages, server side includes (.shtml), PHP scripts (.php).  PHP scripts needing to modify files (e.g. Wikis) will need to grant write access to the web server in the appropriate places
• Any file type may be placed in the DartmouthWebShare folder.

Please reach out to Research Computing for assistance with setting permissions or link ownerships

For additional information, see the general advice on Web sites for Dartmouth departments and Personal WordPress sites at Dartmouth, and Personal web sites hosted at cPanel: host.dartmouth.edu.